Founded in 1771, Vienna's Tonkünstler-Societät was responsible for the creation and public performance of many works that today are known primarily to specialists in the field of eighteenth-century music. Although the Tonkünstler-Societät is perhaps best recognized for its involvement with the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, its ensemble consistently programmed a wide range of music composed by its capable members. During its heyday, the society sponsored on average four concerts a year: two during Lent and two in Advent, just before Christmas. Although these concerts typically included a variety of chamber and orchestral works, the performance of large-scale oratorios attracted the greatest audience. On 22 December 1794 the Tonkünstler-Societät premiered a new oratorio, Die Hirten bei der Krippe zu Bethlehem (The Shepherds at the Crib in Bethlehem), composed especially for its winter concert by Joseph Leopold Eybler (1765–1846).

Eybler is one of the many composers active in the society who has been largely – and undeservedly – forgotten by the passage of time. Yet he enjoyed a long and distinguished career in Vienna. A distant cousin of the Haydn brothers, Eybler was well connected, maintaining personal and professional relationships with both Joseph Haydn and Mozart. He studied music in Vienna under Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (1736–1809), court organist and Kapellmeister of St Stephen's Cathedral. Eybler's first post was choirmaster at the Carmelite Church and later at the Schottenkloster. In 1804, roughly a decade after these appointments, he was engaged as Vice-Kapellmeister of the Habsburg court, where he replaced Antonio Salieri as Kapellmeister twenty years later. Despite his demanding official responsibilities to the Schottenkloster and the court, Eybler remained an active member of the Tonkünstler-Societät throughout his career.

Die Hirten bei der Krippe zu Bethlehem is divided into two sections, comprising a total of eighteen movements. Part 1 contains an overture and recitative, three arias, two recitatives, a quartet and two choruses; part 2 encompasses four recitatives, three arias, a quartet and a chorus. Eybler's musical setting more than compensates for the lack of drama in the text, which is a reflective depiction of the nativity. Following a slow introduction in D minor, the overture proceeds in the parallel major. Rather than reaching a conclusion, it gives way to a soprano recitative ‘Herauf, o Sonne, säume nicht!’ (Arise, O Sun, Do Not Delay!). The ensuing Andante maestoso offers a musical depiction of the rising sun, reminiscent of the same event in Haydn's symphony ‘Le Matin’ (1761) and anticipating that in his oratorio Die Schöpfung (1798), composed three years after Eybler's oratorio. Indeed, the music in Die Hirten is not at all out of place alongside the works of his better-remembered contemporaries. For instance, the quartet in the first section shares similarities with the famous Adagio from Mozart's Serenade in B flat major, k361 (‘Gran Partita’), in its persistent arpeggiated bass, continual syncopation in the upper strings, and the obbligato clarinet, which soars above the other parts with delicate vocal-like interjections. The solo soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices in Die Hirten frequently contain sympathetic cantabile passages, as they do in this brief but impressive movement; in other movements they comprise phrases of brilliant coloratura. The soprano aria ‘Er ist's, Gott selbst in Fleischeshülle’ (It is He, God Himself, in Fleshly Guise) is an excellent contrast which displays Eybler's more animated compositional manner. Written for Mozart's sister-in-law Aloysia Lange (c1760–1839), this bravura aria includes scalar runs, wide leaps and sections of extended melisma. The Harmonie-only accompaniment of chain suspensions in the aria's cadenza is particularly striking. Both sections of the oratorio conclude with choruses. The first section ends with a ‘Chor der Engel’ (Choir of Angels), whose pastoral setting is particularly apt given the Christmas topic. While this chorus's music may have been more in line with contemporary aesthetics, Die Hirten concludes with a chorus embracing imitative writing characteristic of earlier baroque works by such composers as J. S. Bach and Handel. Eybler's Die Hirten is an impressive composition rich with music that acknowledges past traditions while simultaneously engaging with the musical styles in vogue on the eve of the nineteenth century.

The current edition of Eybler's work has been published by Carus-Verlag, alongside his Missa Sancti Alberti (1835), to celebrate the composer's two hundred and fiftieth birthday. Die Hirten is being marketed alongside other Christmas music and is indeed a fresh – and much-needed – addition to the rather small number of Christmas works accessible to church and university choirs. Edited by Karl Michael Waltl, the edition includes a brief Vorwort that places the composer and composition in context and outlines the editorial methods. Waltl states here that he chose to standardize clefs, crossbeams, stems, accidentals and cautionary accidentals to match current publishing standards, and that the original German text was similarly made to conform to modern orthography. He accounts for the occasional diminished note durations in the bass part in comparison to the upper strings by suggesting that Eybler was taking into account the acoustics of the performance venue. But given that the passage Waltl points to (in the recitative ‘Sie nahen, wie tränet ihr Blick!', 33) is a cadential figure in the strings lasting a dotted minim, I suspect that Eybler – or a copyist – simply forgot to dot the minim in the bass and that the editor interpreted this as an acoustical consideration rather than as a simple error. If anything, such bass notes should be extended as to allow the instrument sufficient time to sound in larger halls.

Yet while this is first and foremost a performance edition, I would argue that more editorial intervention – or at least explanation – is required to live up to Carus's own standards. According to the publisher, ‘our primary emphasis lies in the publication of unknown choral music from all eras in critical first editions . . . to achieve the highest quality with respect to the musicological as well as technical aspects of publication’ (www.carus-verlag.com/en/about-us/ (24 August 2016)). Although Carus have certainly succeeded in publishing a piece of relatively unknown choral music, I am not entirely convinced that this edition embraces ‘the highest quality’ with regard to editorial method. All we learn about the source is that it is the manuscript of Die Hirten preserved in the Austrian National Library. Waltl does not explain why he chose this manuscript, or if any other sources exist – he does state that the piece was never published, but that is not to say that it was not disseminated through manuscript copies. It should certainly not be left to the reader to answer these most basic of questions. (While there may be another complete copy of the oratorio, it does appear that the copy in the Austrian National Library (Mus.Hs.3231/1–2 Mus) is the only surviving source.) Waltl claims that only a score is extant: that no individual performance parts survive. But he contradicts this statement in the next paragraph, explaining that the brass parts are located in the score at the end of part 1 (vi). Without the ability to consult the source material, the editor's meaning is vague at best: does he mean that individually copied parts for performance were at some point stuffed into the score; or does he intend to say that someone wrote parts for these instruments into the score at the end of part 1 owing to space restrictions or as an afterthought? Waltl is also cagey about the source's performance markings. Does the manuscript contain a paucity of phrasing, dynamics and so forth, or are they included in abundance? A facsimile of one or two representative pages would undoubtedly have allowed a more accurate understanding of the edition's (not yet digitized) source material. Waltl claims that ‘obvious errors in the manuscript were corrected, missing ties, performance markings, dynamics, etc. have been cautiously complemented and/or adapted’ (vi), and we are forced to take him at his word. Indeed, it is not at all clear whether certain inconsistencies stem from the editor or from the source itself, for editorial decisions are not distinguished from original material. Such discrepancies include, for example, passages that do not contain slurs, but then do a bar later when the same material is repeated. If an editor chooses not to indicate editorial interjection in the score, then a note clarifying this in the introduction would have been helpful. Nevertheless, Waltl has done an admirable job creating appropriate horn, trumpet and timpani parts for the final chorus to replace those that are now lost.

This edition is available in full score, vocal score, choral score, with complete orchestral parts and in a piano reduction by Paul Horn. Waltl's edition is well presented. The size of the full score is equally suited for study as for performance: it lays flat on both the desk and the conductor's podium. The distance between staves also provides ample room for score marking, and the music is appropriately spaced. Save for a few misplaced slurs and ties, the music is impressively clean and facilitates effortless score reading.

This handsome edition of Eybler's Die Hirten bei der Krippe zu Bethlehem is first and foremost intended for performance and not for scholarly investigation. And despite my misgivings about the editorial methods – or rather Waltl's lack of clarity in explaining them – it does make possible the performance of Eybler's exquisite Christmas oratorio, which would be an excellent and much welcomed addition to any choir's Christmas repertory.